Field Report

"SCENIC PHOTOGRAPHY WITH THE D1X"

A review by Paul Caldwell

I am writing this review in the form of a field report. I have used the
D1 for over a year and now have used the D1x for about 3 months. In my
photography, I mainly focus on scenic shots involving rivers and creeks
in my native state of Arkansas. I also do some event work on the side,
but this review is only being written from the point of view of the outdoor
work that I do. In my work I only shoot raw. I use all of the three main
software tools; Qimage, Bibble and Capture 2. With most of my shots, I
work with water as my main subject matter preferring to slow the motion
of the water down with time exposures.

With the former D1 and its minimum ISO of 200, I often had trouble with
"blown out" highlights on my water. In my work, I use a circular polarizer
(CL-PL) combined with at least one Neutral Density (ND) filter, sometimes
two. I also tend to use the higher apertures starting around F11 all the
way to F22 as I am constantly working to cut down the amount of light
hitting the focal plane so that I won't "blow out" my highlights. I have
come to realize that many times I can pull out details in the shadows
but a blown out highlight is pure white and there is no recovery. I prefer
to shoot in sunlight or partial sunlight, as the colors and overall contrast
are much better. When shooting in cloudy conditions, I feel that your
image will suffer considerably in the areas of saturation and color depth
as the colors take on a flat look.

PROBLEMS THAT I IDENTIFIED WHILE USING THE D1 IN SCENIC
WORK

1. The ISO of 200 caused me to use too many filters i.e. CL-PL and ND
even at the F16 or F22 stops.

2. The write to storage speed of the D1 was slow taking about 15 seconds
to write one raw file to a 340MB microdrive.

3. You couldn't take advantage of the memory buffer on the D1 while in
single mode, thus you had to wait till the image had written to the card
before you could take the next image. Not a big issue but it did get rather
tedious at times.

4. The max resolution of the D1 was an issue in regards to printing anything
larger than 8x10. If I was shooting a close up or macro I had no problems
taking the image up to 11 x 16, but any shot that included a lot of smaller
details such as leaves, branches or small details on rock, would suffer
at the 2000 x 1300 resolution of the D1

5. Viewing the LCD in any condition other than total darkness was almost
impossible and I had made a separate hood to allow me to see the image.

6. The battery life on my D1 was very limited. I tend to preview many
of my shots as I am constantly checking to see if the highlights were
"blown out". This would really task my internal batteries and early on
I modified an EN-4 so I could use external sources of power.

7. As most shooters of the D1 have noted, the issue of dust on the filter
of the camera is a never-ending problem. I was hoping to see Nikon change
the design on the D1x so that you could clean the filter with more ease.

8. Support for the IBM microdrive as Nikon had never offered official
support.

There are some other issues but this really takes the majority of them
into account.

EXCITING NEW FEATURES OF THE D1X

Its minimum ISO is 125, which I was hoping would allow for me to shoot
water without blowing out my highlights. The D1x supported a much higher
final resolution of 5.74 mega pixels that allows a resolution of 3008
x 1960. Actually the math comes out to 5.89 but apparently you lose a
few thousand pixels in the conversion process. However the camera doesn't
do this straight off the chip, as the layout of the pixels is unique.
You had a 4,024 x 1,324 basic CCD and Nikon has written a special interpolation
to move approximately 1 million pixels from the horizontal, back to the
vertical. This concerned me, but the only other camera out there that
offered 6mp (3032 x 2008) was the Kodak 760. The price point of the 760
took it out of consideration.

Another issue that Nikon had addressed was the support for the 1Gb microdrive,
which was a major issue for me. The price point of solid-state memory
in the 512MB size is currently priced at a premium. I had used (2) 340MB
microdrives on the D1 and never had a problem so the thought of using
the 1Gb on the D1x was not an issue. Nikon was claiming that they were
using a new LCD on the D1x that used white backlighting so I hoped that
I would be able to view the images better in daylight. Hopefully the monitor
would be similar to the LCD on the 990 Coolpix, which I have always felt
was excellent.

Unfortunately Nikon made no change in design of the placement of the
CCD/filter, so cleaning the filter is still a major hassle. Also since
the CCD of the D1x is the same physical dimensions as the older D1, dust
actually is twice as bad in that you now have a CCD with pixels approximately
half the size of the D1. One piece of dust will cover more area of the
image. They also had still not authorized the use of the sensor swab (From
Photographic Solutions) as an officially approved method of cleaning.
This disappointed me as I had used the swabs on my D1 with no real problems.
In the field; dust is the true bane of a digital SLR.

Until the 9th of September I had only been able to shoot
some test environments as most of the creeks and rivers in the state had
long since dried up. However on the 9th I was able to take a hike up one
of my favorite creeks, Richland Creek and really gave the D1x its first
field-test. My impressions are listed below.

WITH THE D1X NIKON HAS MADE SOME MAJOR ADVANCEMENTS

I found the following areas as a positive improvement overall:

Write speed to the microdrive was much faster 2.5x

Option to use the LCD for setup and custom functions

Much improved battery life of the EN-4

Improved noise with the lower ISO of 125

Better selection with the color modes, either sRGB or Adobe RGB (1998)

The most immediate impression was the overall speed with which the camera
would write a full resolution raw image to the microdrive. I was using
both the 340MB and 1GB sized drives and there didn't seem to be any differences
in write times. I was able to write a file from the buffer to the card
in around 4.5 seconds and I was now able to take full advantage of the
buffer and shoot as many times as I wanted, not having to wait for the
first image to complete the write. I realize that the buffer on the D1x
is small and many people have complained about it, however I was never
hindered by it at all. In the past on the D1, I had reverted to changing
to continuous mode and setting the counter to 1. This allowed taking as
many images as I wanted, but I could no longer view the images, I had
to move to play mode. If you plan to shoot raw on the D1x, a 1GB microdrive
would be a good investment. With a raw file taking 7.9MB, you can get
about 128 images to a card.

Another positive impression was that even while the camera is writing
the file, you can opt to view it and you see the complete image. On the
D1, this wasn't true as you had to view an incomplete version of the image
until it had fully written to the card. Of course this meant that your
LCD stayed on much longer and the battery went dead fairly quickly. Also
the image play back on the D1x is very fast. You can now zip through the
captured images on the card as quickly as you want.

I found that I had to still use the CL-PL and most often a 4x ND filter
for most of the shots. This kept the highlights in line for most of the
shooting but I still had problems and really had to watch my metering.
In general, I used the center weighted metering with the smallest circle
for the metering sensitivity. I shot most of the images in the full resolution
mode and then the medium jpg mode to see if there is any difference in
the results with highlights.

The camera did allow me to work effectively as I moved around my subjects.
I used the LCD to step through the menu screens as I changed the various
settings I needed. As with the D1 the tripod mount location is excellent
and very stable with the rubber base. I made the decision to set the in
camera sharpening to "none". I found that using the LCD was easier than
having to remember all the custom settings of the older D1. While navigating
the menus the screen seemed to have plenty of brightness to read and make
your choice. However, when reviewing a captured image the same is not
true.

I found that the LCD displayed a colder image than that which had been
taken. Many of the images seemed to have a blue tint so that the effect
was a colder looking image. Also the screen seems to display the image
darker than the captured image making you feel that you have underexposed
the image. However as you look over the image you can check the basics
such as focus, correct framing, highlights etc. I did not use the zoom
feature, as it cuts down on the total buffer memory available by 1/3.
With any light at all on the LCD then you will find it hard to view your
image, as it will be washed out. I used the both a Hoodman LCD cover and
the Hoodman rubber hood and still had trouble viewing the images.

The D1x's viewfinder is the same as the D1 so you get the same amount
of excellent information in regards to shooting. These include the exposure
compensation setting, the shooting mode selected, the number of your shot,
and the like. I shoot much of my work in M mode (manual mode) so having
the command dials available to adjust the shutter speed and aperture are
a great help. The real major change in information display is the use
of the camera's LCD for changing your shooting, playback and custom function
setting. This greatly expedites your changes, as you don't have to remember
all of the various numbers and settings for the custom functions. I made
many changes throughout the day to my shooting settings all of them while
using the LCD and still had great battery life.

The battery life of the EN-4 with D1x over the D1 is one of the most
important improvements in my opinion. On this trip I was able to shoot
the entire day on one battery and I ended up taking over 250 images. I
previewed over half of them and since I was testing the medium jpg mode
my use of the LCD was very heavy. I was able to shoot the whole afternoon
on one EN-4 battery. With my older D1, I could have never done this; best-case
maybe 70 images and these images were half the size of the files I was
writing now. I used a new EN-4 that had been conditioned per the instructions
by Rob Galbraith and these seem to really make a difference.

The noise at ISO 125 was very low. Shadows also held good detail also.
This was a pleasant surprise for me. Also what noise that does show is
not the pattern noise that was so common with the D1. During the shoot
I increased my ISO to both 160 and 200. I did notice some increase in
overall noise in my water at the 160 and 200 setting, but everything else
was very clean.

AREAS THAT I WOULD LIKE TO STILL SEE SOME IMPROVEMENT

I found the following areas to be of concern to me with the D1x

A lack of the medium resolution setting for raw images

No white balance support for jpgs with Capture 2

Interpolation Aliasing (the jaggies)

Still very easy to blow out highlights

Overall image quality improvements of about 40-45% over the D1

On the day I had chosen I had mixed sunlight. I arrived on the site right
at 12:00 p.m. and the storm clouds from the night before were still moving
out. I set the camera to ISO 125 and put my 17-35 AF-S lens on. I started
out with only the CL-PL hoping that I would have better control on the
highlights. My average exposure would be a 1/3 sec to 1 second and right
away I noticed that the camera was still going to be plagued with blown
highlights. Spots where the water was concentrated like the bottom of
waterfalls or cascades were blowing out and I didn't have total sunlight.

Without a doubt to me the best file format to use is raw. This is mainly
in part for the white balance offerings that you have in Capture 2. Capture
2 allows you to totally change the white balance that was selected in
camera. You can also fine-tune this setting in degrees. This only applies
however to raw files and not to jpg. After comparing many of the jpgs
I shot to the raw files, I realized that the color retained by my jpgs
was not as rich as the raw images. On both I used the Adobe RGB (1998)
for camera color mode. The difference between raw and jpg in color was
really amazing to me. The jpg images just seemed flat when compared to
the raw files. This was true no matter what software I used for image
conversion, Bibble, Capture 2 or Qimage. Bibble will allow for a white
balance correction on jpgs. I left the in camera white balance set to
A for auto. The loss of the white balance correction with the medium jpgs
in Capture 2 is huge hit for me. I am finding that most of the images
I take with the D1x need some form of white balance correction and this
is very hard to do in Photoshop.

*Image number 2 was taken as a Medium jpg

After looking at some of my images, I feel that the AA filter on the
D1x is considerably stronger than on the D1 making the images overall
softer. This means that post conversion sharpening is even more a critical
factor. I also feel that the improvement on image quality is about 40
to 45% over the D1. I had hoped to see a larger percentage, but after
review of many images taken on this day I feel that's the best. The vast
majority of my shots were taken on a tripod with weight added to allow
for no movement. With any macro shot, you can easily crop your original
image by 1/10 and still pull the crop back to around a 6.5 x 10 and have
great image detail. This doesn't hold true with a big landscape or one
of my typical outdoor scenic shots. The smaller leaves and such are still
hurting. This means that after your conversion from raw to tiff your sharpening
algorithm is very important.

I think it is important to not consider the D1x as a 6mp camera but instead
more in the range of a 4mp camera. The D1x is interpolating within the
camera to get to the final 5.74mp image. This is not to be confused with
the normal Bayer pattern color interpolation, which any Bayer CCD will
do. Anytime you interpolate for size you are going to create a softer
final output. I don't think that the D1x is any different in this respect.
The D1x is a nice resolution upgrade over the D1 but realistically it's
not up to a true 6mp imager as on the Kodak 760. However by using it in
the D1 mode, or 2000 x 1300 you might be able to get really decent color
gradations out of it since you are getting one 1 green with every blue
and red pixel. The larger imager has twice as many green pixels and using
the older resolution setting of 2000 x 1300 means you can now have a 1:1
relationship. This leaves only one color to be interpolated instead of
two per pixel. This is one reason I am still hoping to see Nikon address
a medium raw format.

I was shooting both full resolution raw and medium jpg at the fine compression
setting. The reason for the medium jpg was that I had discovered from
my early testing that the D1x is introducing a new strange problem, interpolation
aliasing or the "jaggies". You can see this effect most clearly when you
shoot a red subject against a blue background. The red subject's lines
will take on a stair step or jagged look. From talking to other photographers
using the D1x, the medium jpg format doesn't seem to create this problem,
since you get twice as many green pixels. However the jpg setting just
doesn't have the rich color of the raw file. The jaggies are not to be
confused with the normal color interpolation that has to occur within
every Bayer pattern CCD. I have attached some crops of images that will
show this effect. Currently I have not read much in the way of complaints
on this issue however you can get the effect very easily. I also noticed
it when I shot a dark subject like a tree limb against a light background.
The problem is not a showstopper but it does create a problem with certain
images. I have yet to find a way to remove it.

*Ron Reznick provided these two images

The D1x will blow out highlights very easily. I have found
that I have to be as careful with it was I was with the D1. My normal ND
filter stack didn't seem to work as well with the D1x but after the shoot
I realized that I have half the sensor sensitivity that the D1 had, so my
filtration should also be half. Once I switched to half the ND value I used
on the D1, I was getting pretty much the same results as before. You still
have to use either spot or center-weighted metering when shooting water
as 95% of the time matrix will be fooled and blow out anything light. You
need to meter your brightest amount of light and then adjust accordingly.
Often times I will select a subject and then shoot a bracket of shots as
I can often times recover some of the highlight detail in Photoshop if its
not totally blown out.

Last is the overall image quality. I have made over 50
prints on A3 paper since I got the D1x with the image dimensions being around
11.5 x 16.5. All the prints were made on an Epson 1280. I am seeing better-looking
images than images taken with the D1. They are not coming back as sharp
as I had anticipated considering the increase in overall resolution. I felt
that with approximately twice the overall resolution of the D1 that I should
be seeing images that I could easily resample up to 16 x 24 or larger. On
this subject I have to say that it depends very highly on your subject matter.
I have included two images from the D1x below. One is a scenic of a small
creek in Northwest Arkansas and the other is a macro shot from one of my
still life collections.

On the creek shot, I used the Nikkor AFS 17-35 and on the macro the Nikkor
60mm macro. On the day I shot the creek there was a slight wind blowing
in some areas of the image but these show up as motion blur. However when
you begin resample the image to 11 x 16.5, you will see that the details
of the trees in the background don't hold up. They are better than the
D1 could do as you would expect, but I was hoping for more like a 60%
improvement on the D1. The D1x has problems with the smaller details.
On the shot of the maple leaf, not the same issue. Here I was able to
take an approximate 1/10 of the original image and then resample that
to 8x10 with very little digitized effect. This is an example of the situation
where all of your pixels were able to concentrate on one small area thus
maximizing image quality. Also macro or close up work images don't seem
to need as much sharpening after the conversion as images of the scenic
type do.

My method for testing an image is to take the raw file and convert it
to either a 3008 x 1960 sized file in Capture 2 or a 4018 x 2624 sized
file with either Bibble or Qimage. The larger file sizes from the later
two programs are nice to have but they again require additional sharpening.
I have found that the ideal size from the D1x's sensor is the 3008 x 1960
or about a 6.5 x 10 sized print at 300 dpi. Here you can tell exactly
just what you have with your image also you have a large enough print
to read out your smaller details. In regards to the interpolation aliasing,
I am finding that Capture 2 seems to bring out the effect worse than Qimage
or Bibble. As far as resampling an image up past these sizes, the final
results are very dependent on the engine being used for the resampling.
I prefer the Lanzcos filter within Qimage for my resampling.

In conclusion, I am not writing with any intents or purposes other than
to pass on my thoughts with a hope to increase discussion on the field
use of the D1x. The camera is positive step in the right direction for
Nikon and hopefully Nikon will step up to the interpolation aliasing issues
in future firmware releases or a modification to the Capture 2 software.
Right now I am still glad that I sold the D1 to purchase the D1x, however
I am disappointed with my final image work in the larger print sizes unless
I am shooting a macro or close up work.

I would also like to thank Ron Reznick and Stan Disbrow for their
help.
Rob Galbraiths article on EN-4 conditioning can be found on his website,
robgalbraith.com
Last but not least Uwe, for having this great site.